The Real Gangs of Wasseypur
The town made famous by Anurag Kashyap’s two- part saga is as gruesome in reality as it is in the film, its coal mines a battlefield for brutal mafia and vengeful families
The town made famous by Anurag Kashyap’s two- part saga is as gruesome in reality as it is in the film, its coal mines a battlefield for brutal mafia and vengeful families.
There is no story of revenge here,” says 24- year- old Iqbal Khan of Wasseypur, Dhanbad. Recently released from prison on bail, he is the son of Faheem Khan, who appears in Anurag Kashyap’s epic, two- part film Gangs of Wasseypur as Faisal Khan ( played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui). “My grandfather ( Shafiq Khan in real life, Sardar Khan in the film, played by Manoj Bajpayee) was killed by an assassin hired by my grand- uncle, Hanif. My father killed the assassin. That’s why he is in jail. None of this is in the film,” continues Iqbal. He says the sequence in Part I of the film, where Sardar Khan issues an open threat to Ramadhir Singh ( loosely based on the real- life Suraj Deo Singh, played by Timangshu Dhulia), demanding the return of an abducted woman, is also fictitious. So, he says, are the Montague- Capulet type romances, or names like Perpendicular and Definite. “You are likely to find Prince and Goodwin Khans here instead,” he says. Elsewhere, a Wasseypur resident who wishes to remain anonymous says, “It was as it had happened.” He was referring to how Part I of the film had ended, with the death of Sardar Khan. Mafia wars of this area, 2 km from Dhanbad’s railhead, now part of Jharkhand state, are local folklore. “Shafiq Khan was really shot dead at Topchachi petrol pump. That’s how it’s done in Dhanbad,” he adds.
Locals tend to shy away from any reference to the violence that rules their lives, though, dig a little, and you will notice a sense of proprietarial pride in the knowledge of who killed whom in this endless cycle of retributions. The film tells the story of three generations of three families— of the butcher Sultan Qureshi ( played by Pankaj Tripathi), mafia don- turned- politician Ramadhir Singh, and the Pathan Shahid Khan ( played by Jaideep Ahlawat). The saga starts with the murder of Shahid by Ramadhir, and the cycle of revenge unleashed by Shahid’s son Sardar, and Sardar’s son Faisal. In real life, Shahid’s was one of the earliest in a long list of assassinations that blots the history of these badlands. Santosh Sengupta of the Forward Bloc, Mukul Dev of RJD, and union leader S. K. Rai were all found murdered in its dusty lanes. Gangster Samin Khan was shot dead on the steps of Dhanbad court. Goon Sakel Dev Singh was shot to death on the bypass road, while his brother was shot dead at Shakti Chowk. Railway contractor Mohammad Irfan and ward commissioner Najeer Ahmed were also shot dead. Superintendent of Police ( SP) Randhir Prasad Verma was killed while resisting a bank robbery in 1991. On April 14, 2000, Gurudas Chatterjee, Marxist Coordination Committee ( MCC)
MLA, was gunned down near Deoli. And in case you thought this was all in the past, Faheem Khan, now INTUC leader and recently released from jail, and his friend Shahid, barely managed to escape an attack by a hit squad on the night of July 30, 2012, that left his bodyguard Binod dead and his brother- inlaw Seraj battling for life.
The attempt to avoid any reference to gangs and violence may have been heightened since the release of the film. The smell of an invisible but ever- present threat hangs over the area, mingling with acrid fumes of coking coal. Iqbal indirectly acknowledges it all when he says, “There are two laws in Dhanbad— one to arrest Faheem Khan’s family, another to investigate denizens of Singh Mansion.” It’s a reference to Suraj Deo Singh’s palatial house.
Dhanbad presents an unreal landscape, far from India Shining: A onestreet town of extreme poverty, with a rich history of labour unions and a bustling middle class. Expect to get stuck in an hour- long traffic jam near Wasseypur or pass by a burned truck on your way to smart shopping complexes, or stumble upon an unidentified dead body in a seedy hotel. It’s a town of myths, half- truths, and blatant lies. Here, coal dust casts a film of decrepitude on the leaves of trees and the necks of men. Many of the mines were abandoned and unfilled after largescale mining became unviable, but are still worked illegally under the eyes of the administration. Others are now open- cast, whose levels of exploitation are unimaginable from the outside.
This is where, in December 1975, a disaster claimed over 380 lives when a lake emptied itself into the Chasnala mine. Kala Patthar ( 1979), starring Amitabh Bachchan and Shatrughan Sinha, Bollywood’s take on the horrific accident, is still remembered here. Reports of roof collapses burying miners in illegal mines never even make it to the inside pages of national dailies these days. Yet, more than man- made ‘ natural’ disasters, it is the mafia that casts a dark shroud over Dhanbad.
A lot of gangs fight over the scraps of urbanisation. ‘ Agenty’, a term for extortion from private bus services, was the apparent cause of conflict between Faheem and gangster Babla, but this is denied by Faheem’s family. Faheem had meanwhile instigated a conflict with businessman Shabir, who rebuffed an extortion bid by him. This led to Shabir and Babla cosying up. Faheem struck the first blow, allegedly murdering Shabir’s brother Wahid, after Wahid led an attack on Faheem’s home that left one dead. Shabir was also allegedly responsible for the murders of Faheem’s mother Nazma Khatoon ( Nagma in the film, played by Richa Chadda), who led the gang after Shafiq Khan’s death.
“The rivalry, with Shafiq and his son Faheem on one side, and the ‘ Singh Mansion’ on the other, is not true,” says SP R. K. Dhan. “It’s actually all about Muslim mafia fighting among themselves.” The attempt to pass off the vi-
olence as intra- sect rivalry, both among Hindus and Muslims, hints at an anxiety to avoid giving it a communal tinge.
The Singhs are relatives of mafia don Suraj Deo, who used his proximity to Jayaprakash Narayan to make his transition into politics. After Suraj Deo, many from this family have assumed public office, especially on BJP tickets in recent times. They include Baccha, Ramadhin, Shashi and Khunti Singh. Suraj Deo was allegedly responsible for the 1978 murder of B. P. Sinha, one of the biggest mine owners. Suraj Deo’s family had wanted the film banned because they felt they were portrayed in a “negative” fashion. Yet, it’s commonly known that the Singhs had their own, long- running feud over coal mines with a Suresh Singh, who was murdered in December last year. Many locals also claim that Shafiq and his sons were not involved with the mines. “According to witnesses, Shashi Singh of the ‘ Mansion’ had Suresh Singh killed,” adds the SP. Like the wars within Muslim clans of Wasseypur, it seems futile to try and keep track of rivalries and retributions between the Singhs of Dhanbad.
Behind the sound and fury of gangland killings lies the bitter reality of fading labour unions and a decrepit coal industry. A frail, bespectacled old man sits quietly on a bed in the Intensive Care Unit of Dhanbad Central Hospital ( DCH). There was a time when his name was synonymous with Dhanbad. A. K. Roy, chemical engineer- turned- trade unionist, was expelled from CPI( M) in the 1960s, and went on to organise contract workers in private mines into the most powerful voice of the workers here, the Bihar Colliery Kamgar Union. It emerged as the MCC after the Emergency. Roy was elected as an MLA several times, and was in open conflict with the state administration, the mafia and the mine owners, who were used to getting their way, using goons to deal with labour unions and strikes.
“We lost around 25 to 30 comrades in the 1970s,” says Comrade Ramlal, once a miner, now an organiser. He recalls the story of Dhanbad’s mining, that began before long nationalisation, liberalisation and the unending violence that marks its sordid history. “Before 1962, there were only two Central government collieries, which had a wage structure, and some 60- 65 private ones with no minimum wages.”
Then A. K. Roy joined one of the collieries. By day he would work there, by night he would teach in a school, and organise the miners. Strike after strike, beating after beating— workers were at war with the mafia. That was when Roy was convinced by workers to stand for the polls. He won an Assembly seat for the first time in 1967, and never lost till 1991. What was remarkable was how Roy’s social status never changed from his humble origins, even after he had become a minister. Locals fondly remember seeing him standing in queue to pay his utility bills, or travelling by train in the general compartment.
“A. K. Roy was probably India’s only minister who had argued that ministers should not get pensions,” says Divan, a colleague. Today, an older generation of unionists speaks of failures, and of their inability to combat the cultural hegemony that accompanied liberalisation. They were the vote bank of Roy, who finally lost in 1991 to a sympathy wave for the widow of the murdered SP, R. P. Verma. A growing middle class has since taken control of the polls, as the power of unions diminished.
Yet the gang war seems to never end, as Shabir, who was released from prison on bail, vows revenge against Faheem, and Iqbal, who had a supari ( contract to kill) on his head while still in school, promises to continue the fight. Meanwhile, a quiet old man who once shook the earth lies forgotten in DCH, and the names of the miners who died in Chasnala erode from the memorial built for them.